I'm off to the south! Got up at 8 am. I wish I had more sleep for the long drive but I had to do all sorts of trivial things. While I bustled around, the recorder transferred my favourite albums to cassette for the trip. By 11 I was ready to go. On the way out I got cash from the teller machine and filled the tank.
In the car I had two shoulder bags with clothes and documents for the conference. I had two dozen cassettes, which from experience I will be sick of after a week or so. But anything is better than commercial radio. Appropriately enough, one of the albums is Pat Metheny's Travels. I also had a couple of jettison paperbacks, books that I don't think highly enough of to read more than once and so abandon at hostels and such places after finishing. They were Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Henry James' The American. I have read neither author before, though I have seen the film The Bostonians. James is a character study writer but the society he describes is long gone. Very little of what he writes generalises to the future.
I had also camping equipment—tent, sleeping bag, sponge pad and gas stove, just in case I decided to spend a night at a park. I also packed cooking utensils. And a pillow for the occasional roadside nap. The nice thing about driving is that you can be prepared for almost anything. The problem is that one tends to overfill the car with junk. Most belongings stay unused 99% of the time. This is true of both travel and life. Oh for the spartan days of backpacking through Europe.
My initial destination was Buffalo, then westwards to Erie and south to Pittsburgh. Erie was nothing remarkable. I don't know what they make here and I didn't care. It was a typical midwest industrial town. Erie is Pennsylvania's only port on the Great Lakes and in fact the only port if you don't count Philadelphia, which is at the head of the Delaware River. Presque Isle juts out like a cashew nut from the Lake Erie shore. It is joined to the mainland by a narrow spit and curves back so much you can row across the narrow opening. I don't know if the French name means it is nearly an island or that it is near the mainland. It is also a state park. There are cycling trails and beaches. It is a warm Sunday and half of Erie seems to be here. Maybe even half of Pennsylvania, here may be the only decent beach these folks have.
Frank Ritter is expecting me at 7:30 pm so I drive on. Unremarkable country scenery, indistinguishable from New York's. The one thing you notice when entering Pennsylvania is that they take speeding violations seriously. Their signs enumerate the fines for excess speeds. Or maybe they are just more mercenary.
Frank Ritter was the chap I roomed with during my summer at BBN. Then he became a grad student at CMU Psych. He's a good sport. I once told a friend his name was really Rank Fritter but that he had a speech impediment and pronounced Frank Ritter.
I was delayed by construction on I-79. There is no easy entrance to Pittsburgh from the north. One has to overshoot the city and come back northeastwards on I-279. Once I saw the topography of the city I understood why. Pittsburgh is built at the confluence of three rivers: Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela. The city lies on steep valley sides and pollution gets trapped. Now that King Iron is dying, Pittsburgh is more livable. But the city still has a blue collar atmosphere, lots of factory workers live here. Old-timers in Pittsburgh still call the CMU students Tech students. The local beer is Iron City and quite decent too. But back to the car. You drive up this steep slope then down the other equally steep side, all the time trying to keep in lane with mad PA drivers on both sides. You enter the Fort Pitt tunnel and emerge immediately onto a bridge high above the water! Now that is landscape. Then you drive at high speed (because you can't slow the traffic following you) along the north bank of the Mon, with a concrete wall on one side and skyscrapers on the other, looking for Forbes Avenue.
Frank had a paper to finish by Monday so we got a bite at the Big O, a fast food joint selling hot dogs, huge servings of fries, chilli and similar American culinary delicacies. The menacing looking clientele comes for free. Along one wall are a bank of hi-tech game machines and the enlightening notice: We are not responsible for any money lost on these machines. It is less dangerous than it looks, there are a couple of bouncers on duty and the cops pay frequent visits. For this genre of food, it is alright. I was tired from the drive and the lack of sleep, so I fell asleep on Frank's floor after a chat and a can of Iron City.
I had also camping equipment—tent, sleeping bag, sponge pad and gas stove, just in case I decided to spend a night at a park. I also packed cooking utensils. And a pillow for the occasional roadside nap. The nice thing about driving is that you can be prepared for almost anything. The problem is that one tends to overfill the car with junk. Most belongings stay unused 99% of the time. This is true of both travel and life. Oh for the spartan days of backpacking through Europe.
Frank Ritter was the chap I roomed with during my summer at BBN. Then he became a grad student at CMU Psych. He's a good sport. I once told a friend his name was really Rank Fritter but that he had a speech impediment and pronounced Frank Ritter.
I was delayed by construction on I-79. There is no easy entrance to Pittsburgh from the north. One has to overshoot the city and come back northeastwards on I-279. Once I saw the topography of the city I understood why. Pittsburgh is built at the confluence of three rivers: Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela. The city lies on steep valley sides and pollution gets trapped. Now that King Iron is dying, Pittsburgh is more livable. But the city still has a blue collar atmosphere, lots of factory workers live here. Old-timers in Pittsburgh still call the CMU students Tech students. The local beer is Iron City and quite decent too. But back to the car. You drive up this steep slope then down the other equally steep side, all the time trying to keep in lane with mad PA drivers on both sides. You enter the Fort Pitt tunnel and emerge immediately onto a bridge high above the water! Now that is landscape. Then you drive at high speed (because you can't slow the traffic following you) along the north bank of the Mon, with a concrete wall on one side and skyscrapers on the other, looking for Forbes Avenue.
Frank had a paper to finish by Monday so we got a bite at the Big O, a fast food joint selling hot dogs, huge servings of fries, chilli and similar American culinary delicacies. The menacing looking clientele comes for free. Along one wall are a bank of hi-tech game machines and the enlightening notice: We are not responsible for any money lost on these machines. It is less dangerous than it looks, there are a couple of bouncers on duty and the cops pay frequent visits. For this genre of food, it is alright. I was tired from the drive and the lack of sleep, so I fell asleep on Frank's floor after a chat and a can of Iron City.
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